The present invention relates to an editing apparatus and a method in an audio/video information duplicating system, and more particularly to an editing apparatus in an audio/video information duplicating system which edits a program by the automatic search of starting and ending points, and an editing method suitable for controlling the editing apparatus.
Generally, a recording/reproducing system is composed of a recording system to record audio and video information on a recording medium, and a playback system to reproduce the audio and video information recorded on the recording medium. Such an audio/video information duplicating system includes two recorder/reproducers connected to each other (one for the playback deck and the other for the recording deck), wherein the information recorded in one recorder/reproducer is duplicated (or recorded) on the other recorder/reproducer. In particular, a system which embodies two recorder/reproducers as above together in one unit is known as a double-deck recorder/reproducer.
The recording medium, e.g., a video tape, of the recorder/reproducer includes a video track for recording and reproducing video information, an audio track for recording and reproducing audio information, and a control track for recording and reproducing reference signals to control traveling speed, phase, and other operations. Especially, binary information in the form of "0" and "1" is recorded on the control track through "N" and "S" magnetic poles at a density of 1 bit per two video tracks. In other words, 1 bit per frame is recorded, and the logic "0's" and "1's" are regularly set by a predetermined duty ratio.
With the current trend toward performing many diverse functions in the recorder/reproducer, a high speed search function has been added to find a desired program among a plurality of programs recorded on a recording medium by altering the duty ratio of the control track. The Video Index Search System (hereinafter referred to as VISS) is one kind of such a function, wherein index information is recorded on a certain point of the recording medium in a predetermined manner, and the recorded index information is sequentially searched by operating a VISS control key during the operation of the recording medium. After searching the index information, the PLAY mode is initiated to confirm whether or not the program corresponding to the searched index information is the desired one. If not, repeated index information searches are carried out by the use of the VISS control key until the corresponding index information is found.
However, in the conventional audio/video information duplicating system, the duplicating method (dubbing or editing process) is greatly restricted. For example, to search a desired program for duplication, several function keys need to be repeatedly operated to control the fast forward (FF) or PLAY modes in the playback deck, making the process inconvenient. Therefore, to solve this problem, proposals have been made to utilize apparatuses adopting the aforesaid VISS information system. By using the VISS information, the FF and PLAY mode key operation is simplified. Further, the desired program can be quickly and easily detected, reproduced, and duplicated.
However, the VISS information system still has a problem in that a plurality of function keys need to be repeatedly pressed until the corresponding index information is found. In addition to this, after searching the desired program, when duplication is performed by the aforesaid two methods of control key operation, accurate duplication is not achieved in the course of converting to the PLAY mode in the playback deck and to the recording (REC) mode in the recording deck.